My painting hangs on my bedroom wall where I can see it while lying in bed. The image haunts me – in a good way. It keeps showing me faces and forms, often when I’m not wearing my glasses! When I put my glasses back on, it’s often hard for me to see what I’d seen moments before. Thus, the image feels fluid, alive, mysterious, and I learn once again how valuable soft focus can be.

The salmon I saw last week has been consistently swimming in a swirling pool through all these intervening days, so I know I want to begin with revealing the fish. Which I do. A lovely, intimate experience in which I get totally involved with putting marks on paper, caring nothing for the larger image or what is leading what/where. It doesn’t matter. I am simply making marks and loving the process.

Comes a moment though when I have to step back, take a photo, assess what next and then I see, for certain, a bear face hidden over to the left behind hands. I bring the “bearish” face into being and then realize, there’s a huge black eye right near the bear. I have to do something with that and look who shows up. Whatever it is, I love it.

I go back to working on the salmon’s pool and realize there is an arm extending from the hand to the right and a hand/arm that need clarification on the left. As I am bringing those into being, my foot flips one of my big paint brushes into my palette, covering it with blue, green and black, all along the handle and the bristles. I take that as a sign – doodle on the paper to clean the brush and use up that precious paint. So I do.

I step back and survey the whole. MMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, I feel a humanoid calling and notice two blue dots up to the far right. They’re widely spaced and I think maybe an ET figure is meant to be there, but when I begin dealing with the head shape, it turns into a woman. And as I paint her, I have to cover up a black hand but I know the hand will be painted again on top of her mouth. She is the compassionate, silenced woman – a planetary call if ever there was one.

The photo below is my ending point for week 3. I love this experience of evolving, of fertilizing and growing. Feels REAL. And I love the not knowing where this image will take me next.

4 Responses to The Others Show Up

You left your mark on my life as no other…….and I had, before knowing you and learning from you…not known I am an artist. Such inspiration again this early morning…awakening so much earlier than I wished …but so delighted to ”come across your blog” so warm my own spirit to my hunger to paint again ……”today!!!” …..my heart says… dear friend and mentor. Love is in the wind….heading your way from my home here in Polson.

thank you, PJ. I am touched by your poetic affirmation. When walking with the dog tribe this morning in the forest, ( my neighbor’s two dogs accompanied my two ), my thoughts rambled over what to title the kind of painting classes I want to begin doing now that I am officially a BIG/DEEP painter with acrylics and tempera…Paint True came to me. Let me know what you think. I want to offer the creative compass for journeying along the path to authenticity and passionate aliveness. Any ideas for a descriptive, catchy title?